DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY

Research Questions to Research

Design (SY7034)

Edmund Chattoe-Brown

ecb18@le.ac.uk

Thursdays 1500-1700 (Brookfield 0.24)

WEEK 2

1. Plan• Administration.

• Discussion of Firth.

• Exercise on your first reading.

• Research logs: First reading on gossip/rumour.

• Break.

• Exercises on different sources of ideas.

• Library dissertations.

• Examples of ideas.

2. Administration

• Apologies about RL@L. Any problems? (Shouldn’t be by now!)

• Questions?

• Return of writing exercises from last week: Please keep them safe.

• Assignment is not an “extra” but just writing up what you already found out.

3. Firth

• What is this research designed to measure?

• What are the typical problems with measuring this?

• How is it measured in Firth?

• What is clever about this research?

• Could you do similar research for social class? How?

• Is research of this kind ethical?

4. Exercise 1 (20 minutes)• How did your reading change what you knew about your

possible topic?

• Did your reading suggest an empirical research question you could investigate?

• Did your reading suggest a theoretical research question you could investigate?

• Did your reading suggest a policy research question you could investigate?

• Did your reading suggest what you want to read next?

• How did your reading change your thinking on your research question?

5. Gossip and rumour article• DiFonzo, N. and Bordia, P. (2007) ‘Rumor, Gossip and Urban

Legends’, Diogenes, 54(1), February, pp. 19-35.

• Diogenes?

• Are urban legends really part of the same phenomenon?

• Claims experts can’t distinguish G and R but no references.

• Oddly, functional accounts of R. (Subjectivity of “threat”.)

• Examples don’t match definitions: “The Port Jervis dam is about to burst – get out now!”

• References going back to the 1940s.

• No recognisable sociology publications?

6. Research questions and ideas• May have to do comparative design for functional arguments: Compare relaxed,

communicative stable organization with stressed, secretive, threatened one? (Content of rumours, number of rumours and so on.)

• How valuable would it be to clarify the terms rumour, gossip, urban legend and so on? Are they actually used consistently by the general public to start with? What do we want such a definition to do for us?

• Article uses “theory” that rumours are about “sense making” as a process but seems mainly to discuss “atomic” instances of rumour that don’t really fit that. Could we get people to discuss rumours, for example in focus groups, to see if they are actually processed in this way?

• The theory seems to be rather simplistic and allows for alternative explanations. For example, perhaps lack of “understanding” leads to proliferation of rumours but diffusion rather than negotiation (ecology not democracy.)

• If rumours help us make sense of the world, why are so many of them so silly? What is the relation between “sense” and truth?

7. Keep a research log• Not history, not anthropology. (But why not?)

• Lots of great old stuff on gossip.

• Get exact citation data as you go.

• Make a list of “can’t gets” to prioritise.

• SCOPUS: rumour: 3414 (13.10.14). [Ditto rumor.], gossip: 2381 (13.10.14), gossip AND rumour: 148 (13.10.14). [Was the same on 08.10.14.]

• SSCI: 153 (was the same 08.10.14). [But not all the same.]

• Google <gossip rumour> (13.10.14): 3,250,000. (rumor: 3,620,000.)

• Chelsea Transfer News, Chelsea FC News, Gossip …

• Google Scholar <gossip rumour> (13.10.14): 48,000. (46,400 for rumor: Many overlap.) [What would you hope to find that was worth finding? Maybe a really good discussion paper. But also loads of stuff you can’t get.]

• Inter library loan.

• Forward citation search.

8. Expect the unexpected“… Men have assumed to themselves a Liberty, not only in Coffee houses, but in other Places and Meetings, both publick and private, to Censure and Defame the Proceedings of State, by speaking evil of Things they understand not …”

9. Break

• 10 minute “comfort break”.

10. Finding research ideas

• What are three sources White identifies and discusses for research ideas?

• Developing a “picking apart” kind of curiosity routinely. Not “for just an hour I will have my research question hat on”.

• Research as packing a suitcase or building a tower.

11. Exercise 2 (20 minutes)

• Read the circulated newspaper article “edits”.

• Discuss in pairs one or two research questions you can see “arising” from your article. Be alert to theoretical, empirical and “policy” questions.

• Be ready to present your questions concisely and explain why they are important using background from the article.

12. Exercise 3 (10 minutes)

• Pair up: Different pairs?

• Identify research questions from the circulated summary of research on extramarital sex.

• Be prepared to state them (and their relevance) concisely?

13. What can we do with this?• “Efforts to understand EMS have naturally focused upon many of the variables

identified as potentially relevant in survey studies. The major dependent variable has been the occurrence of EMS, and statistical comparisons are typically made between EMS and non-EMS subjects. Edwards and Booth (1976) underscore the rationale of this approach, “an empirical assessment of these variables should afford us some insight into the major conceptual components of a theory concerning marital and extramarital sex, and yield a more parsimonious model of these relationships which may prove useful in future attempts at theory-building in this area” (p. 73). A variable by variable account of the EMS research presents a diffuse array of results which are difficult to integrate. Consequently, this review draws together variables with an underlying commonality into four categories: social background characteristics, characteristics of the marriage, personal readiness characteristics and sex and gender differences.” (p. 8)

• Source: Thompson (1980) 'Extramarital Sex: A Review of the Research Literature', The Journal of Sex Research, 19(1), pp. 1-22.

14. Start anywhere?• Who cites Thompson and “what are they like?”

• But wherever you start you must “finish up” the process. (Reminder: Build your research question don’t bin it.)

• For a policy question, did social science already answer it but policy makers didn’t notice or didn’t like the answer?

• For theory, what do we already know empirically and what use can we see our work being? (Marx and the withering away of the middle class.)

• For a question inspired by the literature, what theories or methods can we draw on to best answer it?

15. Exercise 4 (10 minutes)

• Pair up. From the cited reference search and extract from Thompson, identify promising avenues for research on extra marital sex.

16. “Library dissertations”

• You still need a research problem/question.

• What are the differences between the conceptions of class put forward by Marx and Weber.

• Can you tell?

• Why does this matter?

• Has it been done?

• How do you justify what you did? If you can’t read everything Marx wrote on class, how do you choose the “best” things?

• Can it be linked to empirical concerns even if it is not empirical? (Don’t start with “pure” theory?)

17. Examples of ideas• Personal experience: Brass banding, s/h markets.

• Active curiosity: Asexuals, betting shops.

• Literature gaps: Housework (Oakley).

• Methodological preconceptions: Qualitative research on burglars (Wright and Decker).

• “Partial” ideas: No “handle” for s/h research yet.

• Theory development: Religious conversion in Brunei as non Western case study of Rambo’s theory.

• Hazardous idea: “I am going to show how marvellous single mothers are.” (What about the quantitative evidence?)

18. Exercise 5 (15 minutes)

• If time.

• Pair up. Each read other proposal. Comment/question/make notes.

• What kinds of things came out?

• If we don’t have time, please bring your first proposals next week!